


Of Monsters and Women

by Issay



Series: Character Studies [8]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Female Characters, Multi, Not the fix-it you are looking for, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6303847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Issay/pseuds/Issay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world shifts as Eleanor watches.</p><p>Canon compliant, major spoilers to 309.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Monsters and Women

**Author's Note:**

> So I hate Eleanor Guthrie.  
> I started out with a lot of love for this character but somewhere in the last three episodes it turned to deep, 'I will write 10k words fics about your death' hate. But then grief hit me and there was this little piece of things about Eleanor I had to write.
> 
> That being said, I deeply loathe the showrunner's decision to leave the historical truth behind and kill Vane. If you want to see how I would have done it, just take a look at the previous installment of this series.

When Eleanor was a child her Nana used to tell her stories.

There was no better way to make her eat another bite of hated pudding, or to wash her face in the morning, or to go to sleep. Stories from a faraway land, exotic and smelling of spices, rich earth and jungle forests filled her pretty little head. There were princesses, tribes at war, angry gods in their animal forms. There were kings and warriors and brave heroes that always won.

Eleanor was afraid of the monsters Nana told her about but somehow she just couldn't get enough of those stories. In her dreams, she was the heroic princess killing with her spear the lion-god that killed her people. She was the good queen that sacrificed herself so that the rain could fall and the village could survive.

In those stories, she faced those monsters and won every time, her light shining bright in the surrounding darkness.

And then she grew up. Nana, not needed anymore, was moved by Eleanor's father to some other work, too hard for her old and weary heart. She died, not long after leaving the little girl's room forever. Eleanor did not cry. At that point she already knew that the monsters she would face in the real world, not only in her head - fear, pain, sickness, hunger, death - were much more brutal and absolutely unavoidable.

"I used to fear monsters," she would say years later, while in bed with Max, her fingers lost in dark curls, her lips still bruised from kisses. "Now I rule them."

"But do they fear you, Eleanor? Do they obey you because it's convenient or because you make them?" asked in return the voice in her own head, voice sounding exactly like her father's, or maybe Mr. Scott's?

She had no answer.

But then Flint had a plan and that was a good plan. To bring civilization to this dark corner of the world, to let the light in. It was a plan worthy of a brave, good queen so Eleanor supported it because ideas like those turn people into legends.

When she tries to retrace her steps and find the one place, the one decision that brought them there, she always thinks of the day she made one monster pick her over another. She thinks of Blackbeard's - no, of Edward's because Blackbeard was a strong and unbreakable man but there was something broken about him when Charles stood by her side - eyes. She thinks of Vane's hands on her skin, of the heat and of the many times they wounded each other. Of how she wanted to claw his eyes out but how she kissed him while he fucked her on her mothers pretty bed linens.

Maybe if she hadn't, they wouldn't be here now.

She stands still, watching him. The eternal rebel, the man who would not bow nor break. Yes, he would die, she knew it, maybe she even knew that she would be the reason of his death. Every decision they've made lead him to the gallows. So she watches him, unblinking, with her face unreadable because she owes him at least this much.

She wants to cringe with every single choking sound.

She wants to scream.

She wants to cut the rope that is killing him and to set him free.

She wants to take a knife and cut his heart out.

She does none of those things and Charles Vane dies. The sky is still blue, the waves are still crashing on the shore, sun is still hot on the back of her head. But somehow the world shifts underneath her feet.

That night Eleanor looks at her own reflection and wonders when exactly did she become the monster from Nana's stories.


End file.
